1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to printers, and more particularly, to a serial line printer with memory capacity significantly less than that required to hold one print line, or swath, of bitmap data.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Competition in the printer marketplace is such that printer manufacturers, such as Lexmark International, Inc., place great emphasis on cost minimization without sacrifice to function or performance. Random access memory (RAM) represents a system bottleneck and its cost relates directly to the height of the print line. For example, ink jet printers that process data in single print element rows (rasters) require memory in excess of one print line to perform the necessary conversion from the high level language (HLL) to the raw data format required by the print head.
In addition, presently, printers are essentially made up of discrete components, including a microprocessor, an application specific integrated circuit (ASIC), read only memory (ROM), and random access memory (RAM). A next generation of printers, currently under development, have imbedded in one chip the microprocessor, ROM and ASIC. A natural progression would lead to the inclusion of the RAM in the chip as well.
Therefore, there is a significant need in the art for a printer system and method with reduced memory requirements.